Promises to Keep
by Ellex
Summary: The alternate universe Elizabeth Weir had to wake up twice in 10,000 years to rotate the ZPM’s on Atlantis. Missing scenes from 'Before I Sleep.'
1. Default Chapter

Season/Episode: "Before I Sleep"

Archive: Wraithbait, anyone who wants it just let me know.

Feedback: Please!

Disclaimer: Stargate:Atlantis does not belong to me and I make no material profit from this story.

Spoilers: Rising 1 & 2, Before I Sleep

Summary: The alternate universe Elizabeth Weir had to wake up twice in 10,000 years to rotate the ZPM's on Atlantis.

The first time she wakes, she's a little disoriented but calm. She made a decision, and there isn't any way to undo it. She knows that this will give her – give the entire Atlantis Expedition team – the chance to live past their first few minutes in Atlantis. Even if it isn't her, personally, who will live this new, alternate life, it will still be her, still Elizabeth, and this first time she wakes, that's enough.

She switches the ZPM's and thinks about going back to the tiny closet-like chamber that will send her to sleep for another 33 centuries. She can't wrap her head around the concept that she's been sleeping that long, and after a moment stops trying. It's hard for her to let something go like that, but really, what good will it do her to dwell on it? So she makes herself push it out of her mind. Janus had told her that she could take a few hours to look around the city, stretch her legs, when she awoke, and that's what she's going to do.

Atlantis is dark: she doesn't have the gene, so it doesn't light up for her, and that's just as well because it would sap power from the ZPM. But there's just enough light, from tiny, dim spots on the walls that glow softly like fireflies, to see her way through the corridors. She makes her way to a window and looks out into the ocean. It's a little brighter here, sunlight filtering down through the clear water to show her one of the starfish arms of the city stretched out before her. She can see dim shapes flit gracefully between the towers, chasing each other with desultory flips of a strangely shaped fin or tail. As she watches them something luminous with long, trailing tendrils floating behind it wafts past the window and pauses in front of her. It's not quite like a jellyfish, and after a moment it startles her by shaping her own wide-eyed, face in the flexible oblong of it's body. She steps back from the window and the creature darts away. The uncanny mimicry of the thing unnerves her, and she leaves the window.

She wanders around a little longer, not wanting to go back to her extended sleep with the image of her face on the jellyfish, with longer hair and lines on her face that weren't there before.

She knows she dreamt during that sleep, not the vivid dreams of REM sleep, but vague impressions and memories: Zelenka, muttering urgently to himself as he examines the little shuttle in which they escaped the drowning city, the words tumbling out of his mouth so fast she can't even make out the little she knows of his language; Sheppard, eyes wide and dark and desperate, projecting the calm confidence she knows is completely fake, but that told her when they first met that he would be an asset to their mission despite the black mark on his record.

And she dreamed of Rodney, watching the cold water rise around him and snuff out the brightness of his eyes. She didn't actually see it, but it's the most vivid of her dreams. Seeing those eyes dim and close in the swirling water makes her shudder. She knows that he considered her a friend – that he trusted her, and that trust was seldom given – and despite his faults, being a friend of Rodney's was a privilege. He'd willingly, knowingly, sacrificed his own life to give others a chance, and it hurt to know that she was the only one who knew it.

And she thinks of Simon, and regrets leaving him behind more than anything else. He wouldn't have come with her – he's just not that kind of person, not the sort to gamble everything on one roll of the dice for an uncertain payoff. Once upon a time she would have said the same about herself, but somehow learning about the Stargate, the existence of aliens and humans on thousands of other worlds, seeing the incredible Ancient base in Antarctica, fired something deep in her soul that she'd never known existed. The moment it looked like the Atlantis Expedition would really happen, she'd known – without doubt, without fear – that she had to go. Even now, she knows she'd make the same choice again if given the opportunity. Now she is able to give herself that chance again.

But she still wishes that she could at least have told Simon goodbye in person – tried to explain to him what she couldn't even explain to herself. She misses his gentle smile, his easy acceptance of the job that took her to the far corners of the globe, often for weeks at a time, without jealousy or possessiveness.

And maybe that was why she'd been able to leave him, why he'd never proposed to her, why their relationship, never progressed beyond friendship and convenience. That she loved him, loves him still, she knows; but she was never _in _love with him. The vague anxiety she'd periodically felt over the years, as their relationship remained static, had always been eclipsed by the deep-felt certainty that anything more would make them both unhappy.

But thinking of Simon calms and comforts her, as it always has. So it is with Simon's smiling, understanding face in her mind's eye that she climbs back into the little cabinet and goes to sleep for another three thousand years.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

The second time she wakes, Elizabeth feels strange and afraid. Her body doesn't respond the way it should. Her balance is off, her muscles feel weak, her joints move stiffly and noisily. Her eyesight has begun to fade, her hair is almost completely white. It takes a few minutes before she feels steady enough to move out of the cabinet where she had now slept for over six thousand years. The cabinet seems more like a coffin now, but she ruthlessly thrusts that thought out of her mind when she feels herself start to shake.

It's fortunate that switching the ZPM's is easy, practically fool-proof, because she has trouble keeping her attention focused. But whether that's a symptom of her extreme age, the extended amount of time she's spent in suspended animation, or perhaps a side effect of the process itself, which was designed for Ancients, not humans, she has no way of knowing.

As soon as the switch is made, she creaks her way down dim hallways to the large window she looked out of before. It must be night, because no light illuminates the water or the city. She can barely make out the nearest tower, which seems to have a new feature: a large round object juts incongruously from the smooth sides of the structure. She peers at it for a while, briefly distracted by a school of tiny shrimp-like creatures swimming by. Finally, an amorphous shape protrudes from the round object where it's attached to the tower, and she realizes that it's a giant snail. It moves smoothly up the side of the tower, so slowly it doesn't seem to be moving at all. There isn't enough perspective to tell how big it is, but she thinks it might be larger than her.

Faintly nauseated, she totters away from the window and finds herself in the darkened Gate Room without being quite sure how she got there. At the sight of the Stargate, tears begin to stream down her face. She sinks down on the main staircase and tries to stifle the sobs that echo unpleasantly in the empty space.

She misses everything she left behind with an ache that's almost physical. She longs for Marshall Sumner's gruff forthrightness, the slightly condescending attitude that had made her almost wish for trouble just so she could show him that she could lead as effectively as he. She thinks of Peter Grodin, always professional, competent, efficient, and always the first person to lose patience with Rodney's arrogance.

She thinks about Rodney McKay himself, brilliant, insecure, witty; and to those who took the time to look past the surface, a sad and lonely man who'd never really gotten to be a child, who had developed the habit of pushing everyone away so they couldn't get close enough to hurt him.

She'd been surprised that everyone couldn't see this, but as a diplomat she'd spent a great deal of time learning to look past the surface of a person to the true feelings and motivations beneath. Figuring out Rodney hadn't even been a challenge. Gaining his trust and respect, and eventually his friendship and loyalty, had been harder, but the rewards were more than worth the effort.

She remembers meeting Sergeant Bates for the first time and how uneasy the coldness in his eyes made her feel. She understood Sumner's reasons for wanting him on the Expedition, even agreed with them, but that hadn't dispelled the impression that the man would bear watching. There was a brittleness in his suspicious gaze that had made her wonder how quickly he would crack under pressure.

Young Aiden Ford couldn't have been more different. Enthusiastic and cheerful, one day he would make an excellent leader. He'd been at that point where he knew enough to make him very good at his job, but not enough to realize just how much he _didn't_ know. All he was lacking was experience.

John Sheppard…the man was a walking contradiction, and far too smart for his own good. Under different circumstances he'd have been one of Rodney's colleagues. A naturally athletic body, and almost obsessive passion for flying, and a military father had thrust him into a career that wasn't suited for a man with such a strong sense of humanity. He could have been the male version of Samantha Carter, but somewhere along the line he'd had to learn to hide his mind and heart. Elizabeth had been convinced that, apart from the usefulness of his gene, he would make a perfect leader for a first contact team.

They are all gone, and she misses them horribly. The thought that, if she is successful, they will live again, doesn't comfort her now.

She leaves the Gate Room, unable to stand looking at the Stargate and it's empty promise of escape. Without the gene she can't turn on the controls. Even if she could, if she gates to Earth it would use up far too much power and she would arrive a thousand years before the birth of Christ. She's too old now to survive on her own, and the information of planets here in the Pegasus Galaxy is now over six thousand years obsolete. Atlantis can provide her with shelter, but not sustenance. Her only recourse is to go back into suspended animation, back to sleep for another thirty-three hundred years, if she can last that long.

She wanders down the corridors, past dry, twisted sticks in pots full of dirt that has turned to dust, past closed doors and dim staircases shrouded in perpetual twilight. She passes another window, and even the nearest tower is nothing but a vaguely darker shadow in the Stygian gloom.

Her mind wanders with her feet, the oppressive silence of the city prompting her to speak her thoughts out loud. They come back to Simon, as always, and she knows exactly what he'd say if he were here. She can almost hear his voice…

'The City is of Night; perchance of Death,' he would recite, and she would be amazed all over again at his ability to remember perfectly every word of a poem, but forget the PIN number of his own ATM card.

'The City is of Night; perchance of Death,

But certainly of Night; for never there

Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath

After the dewy dawning's cold gray air;

The moon and stars may shine with scorn or pity;

The sun has never visited that city,

For it dissolveth in the daylight fair.'

(James Thomson, 'The City of Dreadful Night', 1874)

With Simon's voice in her mind and the poem on her lips, she returns to the coffin-like little chamber and climbs into it with mingled reluctance and relief. She makes sure the little scrap of paper is firmly clutched in her hand before she wipes the last tears from her eyes and pleads with any deity that might exist, that might be listening, to make sure everything turns out right this time. She hopes that when she wakes – if she wakes – the city will rise to the surface of the ocean and return to the daylight.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

The third time she wakes it's a slow, gradual process. She feels so weak, so tired, the effort required just to open her eyes is almost more than she can muster. But she knows something is different this time, because she can tell that she's lying on her back, and there is light above her, and voices around her. The first two times she awoke she was upright in the narrow cabinet, and everything around her was silent and dark.

The first thing to really register is a voice, clear and piercing and self-important, and so wonderfully familiar. She's tired and wants to go back to sleep, but that unmistakable voice has always demanded to be answered. She knows it won't stop and let her rest until she acknowledges it, so she pries her eyes open. It takes a few moments for her eyes to clear, and the voice natters on, leading her weak gaze to a blurry shape. Something moves fleetingly across her limited field of vision and she finally manages to focus.

She's not sure she can trust that these familiar faces are real, but a growing light draws her dark-adjusted eyes. It's a window, through which she can see part of the alien city – and beyond it, the calm surface of a vast ocean, and on the horizon a bright sun rising in glorious, radiant colors.

Atlantis has risen. It hasn't drowned in the cold water hundreds of feet below the air and light, and the fondly remembered faces around her now are real. They are alive and breathing.

"It worked," she thinks, not realizing she's spoken out loud.

It feels like the entire ten thousand years she's been asleep has all been lifted from her at once. It's exhilarating and exhausting, and it's too much effort to keep her eyes open in the face of so much happiness, so she lets them shut. She can finally let go, and the sleep that takes her is deep and dreamless.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

From 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost

Fin


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